Category: TV & Movies

How to make Hollywood poetically tragic when most of the time it’s
just plain old depressing? The players are forgotten, abandoned, chewed
up, spit out and they die everyday, and the show goes on. Geniuses and
visionaries have to conform or remain in obscurity with a black cloud
following them for the rest of their professional lives. We may never
know the vast array of Faustian bargains director Ari Folman was offered
after his 2008 film “Waltz with Bashir” was nominated for an Academy Award. For an analogy we might look to the story of Palestinian animator
Ralph Bakshi, whose long, illustrious career came to a public halt
after Hollywood neutered his vision of the now-largely-forgotten “Cool
World.” Bakshi knew what he was doing. Hollywood thought they knew
better. Nobody won. Folman apparently skipped a public battle over
creative control, choosing instead to make a movie about what happens
when artists throw themselves at the mercy of the studio system. In “The
Congress,” Folman’s fourth film and second animation/live-action fusion,
talent is an organism to be isolated and studied under a microscope, and
genius is more curse than blessing.

Actress Robin Wright (playing herself) is at the end of her tether.
Her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is losing his hearing and she can’t afford to
do anything about it because roles have dried up. She’s become too
difficult and her last dozen films have bombed. The boss of her studio
(a typically slimy Danny Huston; never not a delight) offers her one
last role. In exchange for a lifetime in retirement, she will give her
digital image to the studio for any use they want to put it to. If they
want “Robin Wright” to make movies, they no longer have to ask. They
just plug her image into a blue screen setting and make “her” act for
them. The idea couldn’t be any more distasteful, but after a long hard
look at her life, and with her son’s condition worsening by the minute,
she ultimately signs on the dotted line. Then the film jumps ahead
twenty years and turns 2D. What happens next is harder to describe.

“The Congress,” playing fast and loose with a source novel by Stanislaw
Lem, splits from its version of reality at the 45-minute mark, and at
that point becomes a decadent post-modern classic. Wright is invited to a
Futurist Congress by her studio (a “restricted, animated zone”) and
becomes embroiled in a bizarre bit of mental espionage involving a
grizzled rogue played by (who else?) Jon Hamm. If it’s difficult to put
into words what Wright gets up to when she becomes a cartoon, that’s
partly by design. Sorting out dream from reality would be difficult
enough if everything didn’t look like one of Bakshi’s loony fantasias.
“The Congress” has to be both the dystopian minutia that Jonathan Pryce
suffers through in “Brazil,” and the high-flying daydreams into which he
escapes. The physical properties of the futurist congress are the
externalization of Wright’s dilemma as an artist. Her personality is a
liability and her physical properties only matter inasmuch as they can
be repurposed at will by a ravenous audience, so why should the world
around her be any different? The congress of the title is a place of
limitless possibility, palpable menace and almost unbearable melancholy.
After all, who would need to escape to a world of elastic existences
except those whose lives were already devoid of meaning?

The film’s central question is heartbreaking and clearly required a
little soul searching from Folman. His cartoon world is like Plato’s
retreat for animation buffs. Everywhere you look there are traces of Max
Fleischer, Frank Tashlin, R Crumb, Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Studio
Ghibli and, of course, Bakshi. It’s a wriggling, hilarious headtrip that
any fan of underground cartoons would be thrilled to be trapped in, but
Folman isn’t content to draw in black and white. “Waltz With Bashir” was a
wry mix of “Waking Life,” Al Jazeera and “The Things They Carried,” and it
was angry to its core. In “The Congress,” that anger has been replaced with
a flamboyant, seductive cafard. Folman
knows that without motion pictures, so many lives would be upended.
Directors, crew members, actors and critics and thousands more besides
who have found their lives’ true calling depend on the success of the
industry. If tomorrow
we could end disease but it meant the end of motion pictures, who would
give up fantasy for reality? That is the terrifying core of “The
Congress.” We need stories to mask the hollowness of existence. Movies have given my life more meaning than any
religious text ever has, but they’re as distracting as they are
enlightening. There is no denying the sense of dread and remorse I felt
when, in one particularly dispiriting shot we leave a cartoon garden of Eden for a grimy, hopeless reality redolent of “Children of Men” or “1984.”
“The Congress” is a roll call of the orgiastic pleasures and bountiful
comforts that art provides, and, a reminder of what waits for us
when we leave the theater.

Source: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-congress-2014

    

The late great Elmore Leonard, on whose novel “The Switch”
this movie is based, gets an executive producer credit on the movie. It’s
significant, perhaps, that said credit doesn’t appear until after the movie’s
played out. Shows a certain confidence on the part of the other filmmakers:
they didn’t feel the need to stack the deck with an emblem of Leonard’s
approval at the film’s onset. It turns out, the confidence was warranted: “Life
of Crime” is a pretty engaging, and pretty authentically Leonardesque, comedic
crime movie. While it doesn’t hit the highs of the very best movies based on
the author’s works—those would be Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” and
Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” two outstanding examples of American
narrative cinema of the ‘90s—it’s also far less slick and ingratiating than the
watchable but very Hollywood-processed likes of “Get Shorty” and “Be Cool.”

The assets of “Life Of Crime” include a relatively credible
1978 Detroit setting, a generous array of seamy characters with seamy
aspirations (and interesting ways of talking), and a pretty first-rate cast
playing those characters. John Hawkes and the performer usually known as Mos
Def, here going by the name Yasiin Bey (no, I don’t know why) are the criminals
Louis and Ordell, and yes, these are the same characters who turn up in “Rum
Punch,” which was the novel on which “Jackie Brown” is based. For the purposes
of this story, both of these bad guys are a little less…awful than they are in
Tarantino’s film. Point of fact, they’re kind of likable, especially Louis.
He’s first seen being talked into a kidnapping scheme by Bey’s Ordell, who
subsequently proves his get-the-criminal-job-done bonafides by facing down an
obstreperous pimp. Ordell’s scheme is to kidnap the wife of a corrupt local
businessman, and demand as ransom the money he’s been secretly stashing down in
a tax-shelter bank in the Bahamas. There are already a lot of holes in this
scheme to begin with—Leonard’s crooks are rarely the brightest bulbs on the
Christmas tree—but the biggest comes to light after the pair kidnap the
disillusioned wife, Mickey, and stash her in the home of an accomplice who’s a
Nazi gun nut. That is, Mickey’s husband, stiff-necked drunkard and all-around
unpleasant fellow Frank, isn’t all that interested in getting his wife back.
And he’s also got a little girlfriend at his Caribbean love nest, and she sees
an opportunity in Mickey’s misfortune.

Before I got off on the plot synopsis I was praising the
cast, and of course Hawkes and to a lesser degree the artist formerly known as
Mos Def are reliable screen goods. As are Tim Robbins as Frank (a role
that would have looked tailor-made for Christopher MacDonald 20 years ago),
Isla Fisher as Frank’s, um, little chippie, Mark Boone Junior as the Nazi gun
nut, and Will Forte as a social peer of the unhappy couple who’s got a weird thing
for Mickey. The big surprise here is Aniston, who gives one of her best if not
best ever movie performances here. Although she’s the female lead, she really lets
herself melt into the ensemble, and I don’t know if it’s the part or if she’s
really upped her acting game, but her performance is measured, engrossing, and
empathy-generating without any overt
striving, cutesy stuff, or sitcom-style tics. She actually develops quite a
rapport with Hawkes, not a fellow you expect her to mix with either in
character or not. The amusing twists and turns of the script, the multiple
instances of bracing humor and consistent tension, help the cast bring this
small-scale thriller to the place it clearly wants to be. Well worth seeing,
particularly for Leonard people.

Source: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/life-of-crime-2014

    

Colorful elements of “Fargo” and “Seven” blend into a bland
beige in the mostly straight-to-video “The Calling,” a piece that almost
miraculously finds a way to waste the prodigious talents of Susan Sarandon,
Ellen Burstyn, and Donald Sutherland. A serial killer that isn’t interesting, a
flat attempt at procedural, all the atmosphere of an episode of a bad TV drama,
and nary a performance that the actor or actress would like you to remember
come tomorrow—“The Calling” is a depressingly bad movie, the kind of film that
leads to sympathy for those involved if you can get past the anger of having
wasted your time and money on it.

Detective Hazel Micallef (Susan Sarandon) barely polices the
sleepy town of Fort Dundas. The small Canadian burg doesn’t need much police
work and so the fact that the wickedness of age and alcoholism are eating away
at Hazel’s stamina doesn’t impact her day job much. Along with fellow small
town cop Ray Green (Gil Bellows), she can get the job done. In fact, there may
not even be much for the new officer Ben Wingate (Topher Grace) to do on a
day-to-day basis.

Of course, all of this changes when Hazel finds the body of
a local friend from church sitting in a living room chair without a head that’s
completely attached. Her throat has been nearly severed completely and her
mouth has been painstakingly put into an artificial scream, a technique that we’re
informed would take about an hour post-mortem as the killer holds the mouth
open and waits for rigor mortis to set in. Creepy, right? Things get even more
disturbing when someone else, in another jurisdiction but not too far for Hazel
to notice, ends up with part of their stomach removed the hard way. There’s a
serial killer in Canada. Can Hazel and new guy Ben get to the bottom of it?

It’s no spoiler to tell you who the serial killer is because
director Jason Stone sets up “The Calling” more as a cat-and-mouse game than a
mystery (one of many miscalculations). And so, early on, we meet Simon
(Christopher Heyerdahl), a man in a long black coat with a bag that portends
evil to come. Simon is a soft-spoken and yet notably creepy tall gentleman, who
seems to want to help, such as with the sick daughter of a waitress he meets,
but the film telegraphs his malevolence with every exaggerated framing or
underlining score. Hazel and Ben follow Simon’s path of destruction while we learn of the
serial killer’s religious motives and hope to God that the film has a surprise
or two up its sleeve. Spoiler: it doesn’t.

Sarandon, at first, seems to be sketching a lived-in
character, someone exhausted by life and just looking for a place to put her
feet up, pour a drink, and read a book. She’s well-cast for a role like that
but “The Calling” never lets her develop a character, pushing her into a
thriller plotline that even she appears bored by. Ellen Burstyn pops up as her
mother, which should be amazing given the talent of these two actresses, and
the resulting scenes prove that even the most remarkable casts can’t save
lackluster scripts and leaden direction. Donald Sutherland appears in not one
but two scenes to explain the plot. I’m not kidding. They were probably
storyboarded as “Donald Sutherland Explains the Movie.”

To be fair, there are a couple of sinister beats, such as
when Ben approaches a camper that we can just sense is going to house a whole
bunch of ugly, that work in the simplest of thriller terms. And the cast, as
they often do in failures like this, will walk away clean and move on to the
next project. You should just skip this one and join them.

Source: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-calling-2014

    

1.

“‘The Simpsons’ and ‘My So-Called Life’ Are the Right Kind of 90s Nostalgia”: Vanity Fair‘s Richard Lawson takes a look at two beloved programs that had their golden era two decades ago.

“‘The Simpsons’ and ‘My So-Called Life’ seemingly overlap very little on any sort of television Venn diagram. And yet, watching both this weekend, it was clear that they share some central spirit. Of course, both shows are about family, the reliable chaos of closely tethered people rattling around under one roof. Both series, in their own particular ways, are keen to the forever shifting resentments, allegiances, and power dynamics of familial life. And when confronting the outside world, the series are admirably, stunningly even, attentive to detail and texture, that certain essential spark of life. ‘The Simpsons,’ in its heyday, was a cartoon populated by very few cartoons, while MSCL was the rare show about teenagers to not pit kids against a monolithic idea of adults, or vice versa. (Compare Patty’s interactions with Rayanne’s mom, Amber, played by the wonderful Patti D’Arbanville, to those with her best friend, Mary Kay Place’s Camille—the adults have real, varied relationships, too!) Smart and empathic and clever in an age when a lot of television wasn’t, these two shows were both, in their wildly different styles, beautiful and thorough depictions of American life.”

2.

“Cynthia Rothrock, Hong Kong Action Films and Expendable Women”: RogerEbert.com FFC Michael Mirasol interviews the martial arts champion and veteran action star at Movie Mezzanine. Make sure to also check out Mirasol’s stellar video essay, “Expendabelles.”

“I got a call in the middle of a movie shoot and it was from William Friedkin. I thought somebody was pulling a prank on me. But it was him and he told me that Stallone wanted to star in a movie with me where I would be the straight and cool partner while Stallone would be the unpredictable wildcard. I couldn’t believe it. But he told me to fly in to L.A. to discuss the part. When I met with William, he told me it was going to happen. Joel Silver was supposed to produce it. Everything was set. But the next time I met with him, he had a copy of the script in his hand and slammed it on the table. He shouted, ‘It’s terrible! I’m not going to do it!’ I asked him, ‘Whoa. Are you saying there is a chance that this might not go?’ He told me, ‘Cynthia, if you get another offer, take it.’ And that was the end of it. I mean I still got paid for it, but I would have liked to have something to show for it.”

3.

“Happy Birthday, David Fincher! Here Are Our Favorite Scenes”: The IndieWire staff picks their favorite Fincher moments, such as the opening scene from “The Social Network.”

“David Fincher doesn’t strike one false note in the opening scene of ‘The Social Network.’ The 9 page two-hander scripted by Aaron Sorkin, who deservedly won an Oscar for his screenplay, sets the stage for what’s to follow. It opens on a tense conversation between future Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Oscar-nominee Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend (played by Fincher’s future ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ star Rooney Mara) that escalates at a rapid-fire pace as Zuckerberg begins to reveal his true colors, causing her to break up with him on the spot — much to his surprise. For Fincher, the scene is subdued. There’s no fancy camerawork, no striking imagery. The opening is all about showcasing Sorkin’s dialogue, to get you accustomed to it. It’s well known Fincher likes to shoot countless takes to get a scene just right, and in this opener his mad method works wonders. Eisenberg and Mara make the challenging dialogue wholly their own, often speaking over one another, with Fincher’s taut cutting only adding to the dizzying back and forth. The scene leaves you exhausted, yet excited for what’s to come.”

4.

“Ten Underrated Performances in 2014”: At Indie Outlook, I highlight ten great performances from this year that warrant serious consideration amidst all the overblown awards season hype, such as Uma Thurman in “Nymphomaniac.”

“Who she plays: Mrs. H, a mother so overwhelmed with fury when her husband leaves her for a younger woman that she drags her kids to the temptress’s apartment and asks if she can inspect the ‘whoring bed.’ Why she’s underrated: Talk about a scene-stealer. Thurman only makes a single appearance in Von Trier’s six-hour epic, released in two heavily cut volumes in the U.S., and it just might be the best scene of her entire career. Lacerating in both its vicious sarcasm and naked anguish, Thurman brings the film to a halt, embodying the outrage of a woman whose entire life has been heartlessly upheaved. Rather than sulk into oblivion, she bulldozes her way into the hornet’s nest, albeit with astonishing irrationality, moving her children around like performance art props in order to smother her ex in shame laced with arsenic. Equal parts uproarious and agonizing, this scene left my jaw on the floor. She gets my vote.”

5.

“Q&A: Whit Stillman on His New Amazon Pilot, ‘The Cosmopolitans,’ His First Agenda-Free Creation”: A terrific interview conducted by Grantland‘s Louisa Thomas. Here’s his response to Thomas’ observation, “It seems like you have an interest not just in expatriate culture but the insider-outsider.”

“Yes, I like group social life a lot. I think I felt strangely deprived of it. I remember graduating from college and thinking, ‘There are no social groupings, no social texture in America.’ I’d read ‘War and Peace’ and Tolstoy and Fitzgerald, and they were always describing these societies where people were connected. And it seemed entirely atomized and unfriendly, and there seemed to be no places to go and be friendly with other people. Which was sort of true. 1973, ’74 seemed to me the absolute nadir of Western civilization. There were just no places in New York to go to that I knew of, and in the ’60s, when were were preppies just beginning to go out, when we were 16, we could go to these tiny little discotheques. So you could go at, like, nine o’clock and cut a rug on these tiny dance floors, and it was really fun. The last one I think I remember was in 1970, there was a place called Hippopotamus. After that, there were like drugs and juice bars. I remember there was this song, ‘The Hustle,’ and I remember being in an inside bar, and [I] was like It’s coming back — and that was the dawn of how I understood disco. And I was very pro-disco. Because it was society coming back, people coming together, going out together.”

Image of the Day

A.J. Sheeran and Sam Shapson’s stunning short film, “The Treehouse,” will premiere on Vimeo Tuesday, September 2nd. For more info, check out its Facebook page.

Video of the Day

The first trailer for “Rosewater,” written for the screen and directed by “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, has been released, and it looks mightily enticing.

Source: http://www.rogerebert.com/thumbnails/thumbnails-82914

    

We’re back with our bi-weekly guide to the best new offerings on Blu-ray, DVD, and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Fandor. As is often the case, when one service kind of slows, another option arises. And so while the number of new offerings of interest on services like Netflix is a little light this month, the recent discs sitting on the New Releases shelf of your local store (presuming you still have one) are kind of amazing. Yes, you already pay for Netflix, but you should splurge for a Blu-ray this week. There are some great choices.

8 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

“Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Fourth Season”
“The Normal Heart”

HBO has long been the standard-bearer when it comes to TV on Blu-ray. It’s funny because, for a decade, their DVD releases were almost always bare-bones, almost as if they wanted to buck the trend of people buying shows in the hope that they would just watch them on the network. Seasons were released without special features and with standard transfers. But when the Blu-ray revolution happened, a policy change clearly took place at HBO and they have been at the front of the HD wave. Their season sets, like for 2013’s installment of their great “Boardwalk Empire” (which will start its final season soon), are glorious. They’re packed with special features and perfectly transferred in a degree of HD detail that often surpasses what DirecTV at least streams into my house. They also provide Ultraviolet copies, allowing you to keep your shows and HBO movies in the cloud.

As for these particular offerings, the zeitgeist seemed to jump off the “Boardwalk Empire” bandwagon after season two but I think it’s been just as strong, maybe even stronger, since. Watch season four just for the great work by Emmy nominee Jeffrey Wright and nomination-worthy work by Jack Huston. “The Normal Heart,” which won the Emmy for Best TV Movie also features some great performances, particularly those of Matt Bomer and Alfred Molina, both Emmy nominees. Buy “Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Fourth Season” here and “The Normal Heart” here.

“Boardwalk Empire” Special Features:
Season 3: Revisited
The Onyx Club: A Step Back In Time
Becoming Harrow
New Characters
Audio Commentaries

“The Normal Heart” Special Features:
How to Start a War: An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the true story that inspirired the film, featuring interviews with Larry Kramer, Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts and more!

“The Dance of Reality”

The art world rejoiced at the near back-to-back releases of “Jodorowsky’s Dune” and his first theatrical effort in years, now available on Blu-ray and DVD. To think that this artist still had such passion and fire in his veins to produce a work this intensely personal and unique that far into his life was inspirational. There’s something about “The Dance of Reality” that should inspire all storytellers to consider the possibility that they may not have yet told their most interesting stories. To be honest, I’ve always found Jodo easier to admire than enjoy. I have a tough time embracing his world but I’m so happy he’s still in it, producing works this inspired and bizarre. He is entirely unapologetic and uncomprising, making only what he wants to make even this late in life. And the Blu-ray is marvelously transferred–vivid and shimmery like the oppressive sun of the coastal town in which Jodorowsky grew up and the film takes place. Again, I’m not as high on the film as some of my peers but the very existence of “The Dance of Reality” brings a smile to my face. Buy it here.

“The Double”

Jesse Eisenberg’s work in this festival hit is some of the most underrated of the year, playing both the bookish Simon and his doppelganger James. When the latter becomes a new co-worker of the former, Simon sees his life turned upside down in this quirky dramedy from Richard Ayoade (“Submarine”). “The Double” polarized audiences on its release but I find it inventive enough to warrant a look. There’s a bit of a tonal uncertainty that keeps it from entirely clicking into place but Eisenberg’s commitment to both characters justifies at least a rental. Or you could buy it here.

Special Features:
Creating “The Double:” The Story and Design
Cast and Characters
Behind the Scenes Comparisons
Interview with Writer / Director Richard Ayoade
AXS TV: A Look at “The Double”

“Love Streams”
“Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”
“Y Tu Mama Tambien”

The three Criterion releases since we last produced a guide are three of the best of the quarter, works from John Cassavetes, Alfonso Cuaron, and Pedro Almodovar. I’ll admit to a little bit of fan-based blindess when it comes to these three filmmakers in that I believe real collectors should own all of their works when available on Blu-ray. And it helps to make the purchase recommendation even more vocally when their films join the Criterion Collection, the most essential series of Blu-rays on the market.

“Love Streams” may not be the first film that people think of when considering the career of John Cassavetes but his final truly personal work gets a fantastic treatment from Criterion, complete with a full documentary on the director to accompany it. The film itself is more striking than I remembered, a melancholy piece about people lost in the current of changing times. There are moments of absolute truth here and the great Gena Rowlands was never better than in John’s films. Buy it here.

Sometimes Criterion digs deep into the international film catalog for their releases (although arguably not often enough) and sometimes they appeal to the masses. “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and “Y Tu Mama Tambien” are the latter, two films that made massive waves around the world when they were released. Almodovar’s film was a gateway drug for me to the rest of his work. It’s not his best film but it earned a ton of attention for its sexually charged subject matter and led audiences to Pedro in record numbers. Without “Tie Me Up!” we may not have “Talk to Her” or “Volver,” two films I unabashedly adore. “Y Tu Mama Tambien” is the better of the two films, an announcement of a major new talent when it was released and a work that holds up surprisingly well today. It’s a brilliant coming-of-age piece with breakthrough performances by Maribel Verdu, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. Cuaron may have just won his Oscar for “Gravity” but the road that got him there started here. Of course, both films get the Criterion HD transfer treatment. No one is better. They never over-polish their films, keeping them in a state that looks like, you know, film. Buy the Almodovar here and the Cuaron here.

“Love Streams” Special Features:
New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura
New video essay on actor Gena Rowlands by film critic Sheila O’Malley
New interviews with executive producer and director of photography Al Ruban and Actor Diahnne Abbott
Interview from 2008 with actor Seymour Cassel
“I’m Almost Not Crazy…” – John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work (1984), a sixty-minute documentary by Ventura on the making of “Love Streams”
Trailer
Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Dennis Lim and a 1984 “New York Times” piece on the film by Cassavetes

“Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” Special Features:
New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with Pedro Almodovar; Agustin Almodovar; actors Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Loles Leon, and Rossy de Palma; production manager Esther Garcia; and cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine
New interview with Almodovar collaborator and Sony Pictures Classics copresident Michael Barker
Conversation from 2003 between Pedro Almodovar and Banderas
Footage from the film’s 1990 premiere party in Madrid
PLUS: A booklet featuring a 1990 piece about the film by Pedro Almodovar, a conversation between critic Kent Jones and filmmaker Wes Anderson, and an interview with Almodovar from 1989.

“Y Tu Mama Tambien” Special Features:
Two new pieces on the making of the film, featuring interviews, recorded at the time of production and in 2014, with actors Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, and Maribel Verdu; Alfonso Cuaron; cowriter Carlos Cuaron; and Lubezki
New interview with philosopher Slavoj Zizek about the film’s social ad political aspects
On-set documentary from 2001
Deleted scenes
“You Owe Me One” (2002), a short film by Carlos Cuaron
Trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Charles Taylor and reprinted character biographies by Carlos Cuaron and Alfonso Cuaron.

“Only Lovers Left Alive”

Jim Jarmusch’s latest film is also one of his best. Personally, I’ve been a bit unengaged with Jarmusch’s work of late, but I fell madly in love with this work, the one I would call his best in 25 years. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton star as two of the last vampires in a world of humans they call zombies. We have so poisoned our lives and our humanity that even the monsters don’t want to be here any more. The tonal shifts in Jarmusch’s film are breathtaking. It can be both melancholy and joyous at the same time. It is deeply sexual and yet playful too. It reminds me of Wong Kar-Wai’s work, particularly “In the Mood For Love,” and I could hang with Hiddleston and Swinton for hours. It’s one of the best films of 2014 and you should buy it here.

Special Features:
Traveling at Night with Jim Jarmusch
Deleted and Extended Scenes
Wasmine Hamdan “Hal” Music Video

5 NEW TO NETFLIX

Streaming services have been a bit quiet lately but there are a few films on Netflix that you definitely should see and you’ll have a hell of a time trying to find them through the awful “New Releases” interface on Netflix. Click through to the reviews and links on the left side to “Watch It Now” to do it more easily.

“Blue Ruin”
“Go For Sisters”
“Middle of Nowhere”
“The Unknown Known”
“The Way Back”

3 NEW TO VOD

Finally, want to pay for a movie? How about one of these, including one of my favorite films of the year?

“Starred Up”

“To Be Takei”

“The Zero Theorem”

Source: http://www.rogerebert.com/demanders/home-entertainment-consumer-guide-august-28-2014

    

1.

“David Chase Offers Response to ‘Tony Didn’t Die’ Article”: RogerEbert.com Editor-In-Chief Matt Zoller Seitz writes for Vulture about the “Sopranos” creator’s claims that he was misquoted in the controversial Vox piece, “Did Tony die at the end of ‘The Sopranos’?”, penned by Martha P. Nochimson, which is much more thoughtful and provocative than many of its critics have claimed.

“It’s a compliment to ‘The Sopranos’ and its creator that the show’s final episode aired seven summers ago and we’re still arguing about the meaning of that cut-to-black ending in Holsten’s diner. I don’t think the Vox piece, or this piece, or any piece ends the discussion. And not to get all Death-of-the-Author on you, but I don’t think Chase’s statement ends it, either. And I say that without disappointment, even though I hate the chorus that keeps chanting ‘Tony died’ over and over as if it were a mantra. I wish this question didn’t keep getting asked, because I think it’s the wrong thing to ask about ‘The Sopranos.’ It may, in fact, be the last question anyone should ask about ‘The Sopranos.’ The fact that a great many people keep asking it is depressing.”

2.

“How do writers find their voices?”: The Guardian‘s Jennifer Hodgson reports that a “survey of Edinburgh books festival authors reveals that ‘hearing a character’ means different things over” the “course of a writing career.”

“One particularly startling finding has been that many writers are unable to ‘see’ the faces of their protagonists. The main character often registers as a blank – or, in one case, pixelated like a censored photograph. It’s also becoming clear that writers’ engagement with their inner voice, and the role it plays within the literary-creative process, changes radically over the course of their careers. Early on in their writing life, there may be little to distinguish the inner voice of the author from the voice of the character. Writers describing the formative years of a career have spoken of character formation as a case of ‘throwing’ their voice, frequently tasking characters with voicing what they, the author, do not feel able to express. At this time, the inner voice tends to be experienced as integral, direct and personal; authors’ engagement with the inner voice through writing may be inflected by a sense of distress or turmoil, and motivated by the need to negotiate their position in the world.”

3.

“The ‘Star Wars’ George Lucas Doesn’t Want You To See”: The Atlantic‘s Rose Eveleth discusses the increasingly rare original version of Lucas’ game-changing 1977 masterpiece, and the man who has set out to recreate it.

“In 1978, ‘Star Wars’ won seven Academy Awards. But if you want to watch that original version, the first of George Lucas’s soon to be seven-part saga, you’ll find it difficult. In fact, it’s actually impossible to buy an official copy of ‘Star Wars’ as it was first released. Lucas doesn’t want you to see that version. Instead, he wants you to watch the continuously updated special editions—movies with added CGI, changed sound effects, and whole new scenes. According to some fans, every element that prompted the Academy to recognize the original ‘Star Wars’ has been changed in these new versions. And some of those fans are now taking it upon themselves to recreate the original ‘Star Wars’ in a process they call ‘despecializing.’ They gather in online forums and share their work—painstakingly reassembling the movie from a handful of different versions of the film, from VHS to DVD to 35mm print scans using photography and animation software. One of the most well known despecializers goes by the name ‘Harmy,’ and he recently released a little behind-the-scenes look at the various sources he used for his despecialized edition.”

4.

“20 Overlooked 60s Thrillers That Are Worth Your Time”: A must-read list by Taste of Cinema‘s James Davidson, including such gems as 1965’s “Bunny Lake Is Missing.”

“Directed by Otto Preminger and shot in London, ‘Bunny Lake is Missing’ is another of the British psychological suspense thrillers that were popular at the time. In the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock and ‘Psycho,’ Preminger attempted to get audiences to agree not to divulge the ending, even making a trailer for the film in which he appeared to make his appeal to the audience.It was all a publicity stunt, of course, but ‘Bunny Lake is Missing’ is still a taut thriller with great acting and glorious black and white cinematography. Although the surprise ending seems somewhat cliche now, the film is still definitely worth a watch.”

5.

“Hollywood’s Big-Money YouTube Hit Factory”: Felix Gillette of Bloomberg Businessweek explores the new profitable platform for teen entertainment.

“When Brian Robbins first told people he was going full time into the YouTube (GOOG) business, his colleagues in Hollywood were incredulous. ‘My agent, my lawyer, my dad—people thought I was crazy,’ he says. For decades, Robbins had worked in the traditional entertainment industry, first as a teenage actor starring in the ABC sitcom ‘Head of the Class,’ then as a producer of TV shows about teenagers, such as ‘Smallville’ and One Tree Hill, and finally as a director of feature films catering to teenagers, including ‘Good Burger,’ ‘Varsity Blues,’ and ‘Norbit,’ a comedy starring Eddie Murphy in multiple roles, among them an obese woman. It was steady and lucrative work, if not always the most prestigious. Watching the ways in which his two teenage sons consumed media, Robbins became convinced that the future of youth entertainment wasn’t in broadcast or cable TV but in short-form digital videos, particularly on YouTube. He thought big media companies had been slow to adapt, leaving a void that he could fill. And so, in 2012, the former teenage star set up a business to recruit, manage, and capitalize on the teenage stars of tomorrow.”

Image of the Day

On his blog, Jim Romenesko shows how a “newspaper chain that’s laying off copy editors misspelled its own name in a newsletter.” So funny and yet so sad.

Video of the Day

Iconic director David Lynch releases what is easily his best film in eight years in the form of an Ice Bucket Challenge video. It’s worth watching simply to hear who he challenges at the end. It’s priceless.

Source: http://www.rogerebert.com/thumbnails/thumbnails-82814